Talking Shop - Part 2
Vas was a strong young man, but he wasn’t about to haul around a shipload of supplies by himself. And let’s face it, Jacy wasn’t going to be much help there either. Fortunately, most of the vendors nearest the docks were given to brokering large orders and having the supplies delivered to the ships. It was a service whose cost was buried in the price. Unless you had your own Mule, you had little choice but to bite. Riley hadn’t even offered up the use of LV’s Mule and Jacy had no clue how to operate it so that was probably for the best. So the haul from the general store was paid for and scheduled for delivery to the Lunar Veil within the hour. The reliability of each vender’s delivery service had more to do with the reputation of the ship’s captain than any price Vas or Jacy could have paid. In this case, Captain Keller was respected enough to ensure his goods made it to the ship. That part knocked out, the two deckhands moved on to the medical supplies which were always in high demand. Jacy was accustomed to a cleaner, more sterile shopping experience than the markets of Santo could provide, but she did her best not to hold her standards too high. Besides, the further they wandered from the docks the worse things got so they swung into a closed walled stall and went straight up to the employee behind the red tape. It was actual red tape separating the front of the store from the back where everything was placed for safe keeping. Jacy hung back just enough to watch Vas’ initial reaction to the dark-haired woman in a skimpy nurse outfit who stood at that tape with the cliche clipboard in hand. “Hello sir, how many of my bits are you looking to get your hands on today?” The nurse, who probably was no nurse at all, was well a beauty and had clearly learned to play to her advantages when dealing with customers and Vas may have struck her as the sort to get flustered over it. Jacy had been to all the best medical facilities the Core planets could provide and she’d never seen such a well endowed nurse nor one in heels so high. Jacy was actually a touch jealous. Jacy wrapped her arm around Vas’ waist and smiled at the nurse, “Go on sugarbear, tell the pretty lady what we’re looking for. It’s written down there on the list if you find yourself suddenly forgetful.” Vas just hoped Riley budgeted for this; medical supplies weren’t cheap and Santo was at the border of the core planets. He hoped Jacy wasn’t riding on Vas’ charm with the women to get them a good price; a charm which ranged from blushing wildly to bashfully avoiding eye contact. Seduction was NOT his forte. Either way, he was questioning if this was an ACTUAL medical facility given the lady’s attire and ample cleavage. Not that a nurse couldn’t be big-bosomed, they just rarely presented so much of it outside of their uniform. “Can you give us an estimate?” Vas said passing the lady the list; eyes very clearly at her face. “See what you have first of course.” One couldn’t assume they would. The boy was familiar with some of the things on the list but not all of it. ‘Hello Nurse’ took the list. “Let me take a look at what we have.” She said taking the list and moved through the rows of medical equipment with a click of her heels. “So … sure by now, you know plenty ‘bout me.” Vas smiled clearly indicating it was Jacy’s turn to spill the beans. “You have a family and such, got any brothers or sisters? They all dance or just you?” He asked. “I don’t have any birth sisters, my mother deemed it beneath her to endure the burdens of childbearing more than once. Even then she accused me of taking advantage of her somehow. As if I’d had anything to do with my own birth; or conception. She never really wanted children, but she needed a protégé and she could think of no female better than herself to breed that star student. My father was rarely in the picture and never her husband. He was picked for his physical features and those of his lineage, though I think his musical talents have served me well.” Jacy & Vas were picking around in the bins, not particularly paying attention to what they were looking for. Everything they’d need would be in the back, away from the sticky fingers of any would-be thieves. “But then I broke my ankles which wasn’t so bad in itself; they were little more than stress fractures. It was the tendons that would really keep me from dancing again. Anyways, my dancing days were behind me at that point. I was not much use to my mother for many months, laid up in recovery as I was. And as I recovered I was of even less use to her. I was no orphan, but my mother no longer had a daughter if you chose to believe the hateful claims she made. I swept floors and loaded the other girl’s luggage as they went off to competition. They were never like sisters, ballet is a highly competitive sport. Those girls were ruthless in their pursuit for whatever advantage they could get over one another and they were only 11 years old. Can you imagine? Me? Hauling luggage? And here I am, a deckhand using those same skills. A secret for you; I’ve never done this deckhand gig before. Physical labor stopped being my forte when I was twelve; that’s when a stranger passing through shared some words with my mother on some subject I’ll never know, but she spotted me. I don’t think it was pity because she’s never struck me as the type to pity someone else. She saw something in me that she was willing to nurture, but I had to want it and I had to ask for it. That’s one of the first lessons she taught me. Know what you want and go after it. I went to live with her from then on; at her temple of sorts. There were other girls there too, some my age, but many older. There were two boys as well, but we didn’t see them as often as each other. This was much different than my mother’s ballet company. These girls genuinely enjoyed my company and I theirs. We helped one another with lessons and sparred with one another in training, but there was no malice or strive to succeed at the cost of another’s failure. We did everything together, everything, but we didn’t mingle with the world at large. I suppose you and I were brought up similarly in that regard. I lived and studied there for eight years. We were educated across the spectrum; enough to converse on any topic at any rate. We were surrounded by beautiful lessons and beautiful people, but always there was a firm discipline to maintain body and mind. We pretended to be enlightened until we believed that we were and in doing others believed it as well. Behavior, demeanor, bearing; we were to know our place, but to always assert our place at the top without seeming to do so. It was and is complicated. Sugarbear….” Jacy moved in front of Vas much as she had at the opera when Diva Jat delivered her devastating denial. “What do you think it is that I do? My profession which clearly is not deckhand. I wonder how sheltered you were at temple if you’d know.” “I feel for ya.” Vas said sympathy clear in his tone. It was odd how the pair was in a way cut from the same cloth. “I do, really.” He added. ~Twice over in fact.~ “Jacy I think don’t it matters what you were,” Vas said quietly. “Just who you are now because if you loved what you were you wouldn’t be here at the edge of the core planets ‘bout to head out to some dusty hot place full of not so nice folk. I figure you don’t mean no one no harm, less they harm you first. So as far as I’m concerned you’re a green deckhand, just like me.” Vas shrugged innocently. “We are all on this ship cuz everyone is running away from something.” The boy reminded. He wasn’t in the habit of digging up other people’s secret unless they were willing to share. Even then Vas was too scared to share his secrets without sugar coating or outright lying. He was all too willing to accept her, hell the whole crew, at face value because of it. He was willing to give the very thing he wanted; Acceptance. “But yea, I am pretty sheltered in a way,” Vas confirmed for her. It was true that much at least. He had lived with only a single focus his whole life with one goal. The rest of it was provided for him. Being on his own, responsible for himself was a whole new experience for him and survival out here was vastly different from survival at the temple. Jacy shook her head, that wasn’t quite what she’d been trying to tell the young man. “What I was is who I am and who I will go back to being. This, shopping, deckhand, roughing it on the Lunar Veil, none of this is who I am. I’m here for a reason and trying to play the best role I can, but I’m not running from my past, I’m trying to save it. There’s corruption at my guild’s temple and I’m looking for the means to purge it. Perhaps I was wrong, Sugarbear. You don’t know who I am. And that’s okay, I may even prefer it that way. We can be Vas & Jacy for that much longer.” The inappropriately dressed nurse had returned, but she stood off while the two finished their talk. She was looking between the two of them, but something was gone unsaid that even she could see. She cleared her throat and stepped forward with the list. “Forgive me, we have it all except for these two here, but it will run you quite high. I don’t mean to presume, but if you find the price more than you’d planned for we can remove part of your order…..” “We would likely be left behind on this port if we returned to our ship with so much as a single item omitted from this list.” They did not have the money for much of this. “This ceramics kiln and ventilator are not in stock or not likely to be found period?” Jacy was looking over the bill as she asked the clerk. “It’s not something we carry in quantity and a sell was made just yesterday. We haven’t restocked, I’m sorry Ma’am.” “Ta Ma Duh, you think the Doc would have put in what he absolutely needed not what he wished he could get.” Vas murmured more to himself than to anyone in particular. He doubted Riley had loaded Jacy with enough cash to foot this bill. “Do you know where we could procure them? If we pay for them now along with the rest of this bill, would you be able to have them delivered to our ship before noon?” “I could, yes. I know where to find them. But we’d need payment in advance.” The saleswoman dressed as a nurse was eyeing the small stack of paper cash in Jacy’s hand with raised eyebrows. “I’ll settle the invoice with Alliance credits. Vas, hold onto the cash, please.” She handed the money to Vas and retrieved her IdentCard, considering it briefly before presenting it to the other woman. Jacy gave Vas a friendly smile while she folded up the list and the woman flipped the card right side up in her hands. Her eyes grew wide as she looked up at Jacy, but Jacy just tapped the counter and nodded. Nurse Boobs McGee slid the card through the reader under the counter and waited a brief moment while the purchase processed through the Cortex. She then handed it back to Jacy and smiled. “Thank you Miss. Ellylo, thank you very much for your business.” Vas blinked not sure what to say. The event only made more questions pop in his head. But it ultimately boiled down to … If she had money why was she slumming it with the LV? He decided to wait to ask until after. For a bit, Vas eyes were as big as the nurse, Jacy hadn’t so much as batted an eye at the price tag! They made arrangements for delivery of the medical supplies to the ship and were leaving the small store when the clerk called out to Vas, “You’re a lucky man, Sir. Enjoy your time with her.” The young punk waited until they left the establishment before speaking. “So, am I allowed to ask what just happened?” It was almost surreal what just went down! “I tried to tell you, but it didn’t sound like you wanted to know, Sugarbear. I’m out here to help my guild, even though they don’t know what it is I’m hoping to do or that it’s for their benefit. What? Did you have more money stashed down your pants?” Jacy pretended to go for the front of his trousers, but Vas was too quick for that and would sooner die than have her snake her hand down his pants. “We need those supplies, Vas. So I bought them. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.” “I said it didn’t matter! That I was happy to just know you as who you are.” He squeaked. “But that was full on alliance credits. A lot of it.” Vas wasn’t totally daft after all. He couldn’t help but eye the girl as he defended his dignity from her wandering hand. “Don’t try to embarrass me and to make me forget my line of questioning. I will have you know I have exactly the amount of coin you would find in a well-worn couch!” “Well I know one thing, swinging that kind of cash means nothing but complications.” Vas said giving her an oblique look but he figured she was going to want him to drop the subject. She wasn’t wrong but it still didn’t sit completely well with him. Jacy had an agenda and when that was done she would most likely leave. Vas had selfishly entertained a boyish idea but … she was clearly a high glass gal. He would just be a story she would tell. It was just Jacy had a way that sent everything in his head spinning. But all of this was temporary for her. For him, this was as good as it was going to get. She would move on one day. Vas fished out a black cigarette as they walked together, breathing out a cloud of spicy smoke. “So Vas & Jacy.” He jibbed. Vas had enough weighing on him right now, he hoped to lighten the mood. Just for a bit. “Milkshake and Sugarbear. And we just did all the shopping in under two hours.” “My oh my an official team nickname and job well done I suppose. I suppose there ain’t a power in the ‘verse that can stop us now.” Vas chuckled the pair stepping back onto the ship with time to spare. Now it was just a matter of unloading the goods as they came in.